The Care Guy's blog

Part 24 of The Mental Health Workers' Guide considers the meaning of recovery in mental health care. Don't forget that you can download the podcasts and video clips that accompany this series here.

I've finally taken the plunge on put some of my work on the Amazon Kindle store. This means that anyone with a Kindle (or who has downloaded the free Kindle app for PC, Mac, Android, iphone or ipad) can read my stuff with ease. You can even download them to your mobile 'phone to read or refer to 'on the go'.

Both these books are designed to help 'hands on' workers in health or social care without being so lengthy and 'waffling' that they become too difficult to make sense of. Because they're on Kindle they're searchable through keywords and easy to carry around.

The first two books cover ....

Challenging behaviour in health and social care 

Health and social care workers sometimes feel obliged to ‘deal with’ behaviours that they don’t personally agree with. However this isn’t always necessary. By respecting service-users' choices we can avoid many of the conflicts that make health and social care work so difficult in practice.

Sometimes the things that workers think of as ‘challenging’ are really just ‘different’. Knowing the difference between ‘choice’ & ‘challenge’ is a key part of social care work.

But workers also have the right to be free from abuse, assault & harassment. In this book Stuart Sorensen (The Care Guy) consider ways to strike a realistic and reasonable balance between the needs of all concerned and everyone's right to be safe and free from abuse.

Sometimes we really do need to get involved and 'deal with' challenging behaviour. This often means having very firm boundaries and an awareness of what we should and should not ‘get into’ with service-users.

Once we know what behaviours really are 'our business' we need to understand what to do about them. This book brings a refreshing 'common-sense' approach to established theories of behaviour management that has a truly practical flavour to it.

Safeguarding   

Adult Protection has been well and truly 'in the spotlight' over the last ten years or so. High profile abuses of vulnerable people has prompted the government to look again at UK Safeguarding systems. The result has been new legislation and a new way to regulate health and social care provision.

This book is for people working in the practical, ‘front line’ of health and social care. It is not written for those managers and investigators who design and implement the wider systems we need to ensure compliance.

It has an altogether more practical feel to meet the needs of hands on workers who are much more likely to be ‘alerters’ than ‘investigators’.

The aim is to help people to make sure that their own practice is 'clean' and to recognise safeguarding problems if and when they do arise.

Bulk and paper purchases

If you'd like to arrange to purchase paper copies for yourself or your workforce please get in touch. These (and other) books are available in A5 paper format with discounts for bulk purchases.

20 commandments 8: Thou shalt not hide behind a newspaper on the ward or make any other unapproachable impression otherwise

The mental health workers’ guide part 23

Part 23 of The Mental Health Workers' Guide considers the role of therapeutic optimism and the self-fulfilling prophecy in mental health care. Don't forget that you can download the podcasts and video clips that accompany this series here.

20 commandments 7: Thou shalt have an open conversation if your client is suicidal and give good support and protection if necessary

I've been writing 'stuff' for years. From the 'Mental Capacity Act' to 'Safeguarding', from 'Mental Disorder' to 'Counselling' and 'High Expressed Emotion' the list of topics goes on and on.

Several times over the years colleagues have suggested I sell my work and I've always resisted that. I'm not entirely sure why but the idea of charging for this stuff has seemed odd to me. But now I'm biting the bullet.

I've spent the last couple of weeks editing a lot of my previous writings and updating others. I've a bit more work still to do but it won't be long. So watch this space. The Care Guy is about to open an online shop.

We'll start with just a handful of titles in written form but over time I'll be adding more and also multimedia versions (rather better quality than my customary blog, youtube presentations and podcast), all reasonably priced and, I hope genuinely useful to people working in health and/or social care settings.

So please, keep an eye on the site and have a look when the shop goes live in a week or two. There'll be discounts for bulk purchases too as several of my planned offerings will be suitable for organisations to buy for their staff teams. The safeguarding handbook, for example might be of interest to providers as a way to back up their established training programmes.

While I'm on the subject, if you're a training provider who doesn't already have an established safeguarding programme give me a call. I'm very reasonable and I work all over UK.

Anyway - watch this space........

The mental health workers’ guide part 22

Part 22 of The Mental Health Workers' Guide considers the role of the invalidating environment in mental health and emotional development. Don't forget that you can download the podcasts and video clips that accompany this series here.

20 commandments 6: Thou shalt not let your bad mood or personal issues influence your professional attitude

There are, of course a multitude of well known reasons why people shouldn’t bring their bad temper to work – any work. It’s unproductive, it’s unprofessional and it’s antisocial. But in mental health circles there’s a different dimension to consider.